Archives

Categories

On the Come Up

by Angie ThomasFirst sentence: “I might have to kill somebody tonight.”Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!Release date: February 5, 2019 Review copy provided by the publisher.Content: There is a lot of swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and some violence. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+), but if you read The Hate U Give, then this will be good for you.

Bri has one goal in life: to be a rapper. She’s a talented poet, she’s good at thinking on her feet, and she has a killer beat. However, that’s not what her mother — especially after Bri’s father, a semi-famous rapper, was killed in a gang war — wants for her. She wants Bri to be like her older brother, focusing on school, getting into a good college, and Be Something. But, things are rough for their family: sometimes they go without heat or electricity because it’s tough making ends meet, and when Bri’s mom loses her job, Bri’s determined to make a go of being a rapper.

But things backfire: at the expensive (white) prep school that Bri attends, she’s apprehended by the security guards for carrying contraband (in this case, candy she sold to make a few dollars) and it spirals into a referendum on racism and profiling that Bri doesn’t want to be stuck in the middle of.

Bri’s story is one of heart and hopefulness — is she really “on the come up”? Can she make it with just talent, and not by succumbing to the racist whims of studio executives? — with an underlying look at the everyday racism and trials that Black people go through. It’s not as heart wrenching as THUG was, but it is eye-opening, especially for a middle-aged white woman who is trying to see the world through a different pair of eyes. Thomas is a talented writer, telling stories that not only are representative for the world around her and accessible to her target audience, but are also Important for everyone to read.